Souder: Regular Prayers And Hymns Failed To Stop Affair

If only Mark Souder had listened to Dan Quayle, everything would have turned out better.

Souder, the Indiana Republican congressman who resigned last month after admitting to an affair with a staffer, is still giving interviews. In the latest, with the Christian WORLD magazine, Souder says that when he was first elected to Congress in 1994, Quayle called and advised him to move his family to Washington. Souder now regrets not taking the advice.

Souder has been very publicly trying to come to terms with the abrupt end of his career for several weeks now. He spilled his guts to WORLD, which did a cover story based on "more than a dozen emails" from Souder.

"I prayed multiple times a day, sang hymns with emotion and tears, felt each time that it wouldn't happen again, read the Bible every morning. . . . So how in the world did I have a 'torrid' (which is an accurate word) many-year affair? How could I compartmentalize it so much?"

Souder also pointed the finger at the cold nature of Washington life (though he did not mention the lack of windows on Capitol Hill office doors):

One of the biggest dangers--which is partly why intimacy is desired--is loneliness. Loneliness doesn't mean being alone as much as it means being around hundreds of people but not really knowing them. It's a job that results in hundreds, even thousands of friends, but not much closeness.